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C.OEmiGHT DEPOSm 



SONNETS OF 
A PORTRAIT'PAINTER 

AND OTHER SONNETS 



BY 
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE 



V^I^VH^, (M , 



NEW YORK 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

MCMXXII 



COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE 



^-Dt) 






PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 



FEB f 7 1923 



C1A698424 



FOREWORD 

The reissuance of ^^ Sonnets of a Portrait- 
Painter y eight years after its first appearance, has 
given me an opportunity for certain revisions. I 
have made many changes in the order of the sonnets, 
and have added a few new ones and omitted a few 
old ones. My aim, in all this, has been to make 
clearer the succession of events and emotions of 
which the series purports to he the history. For I 
have learned with surprise that many people who 
have read and even liked the series have remained 
quite unaware that these sonnets were intended to 
tell a connected and gradually developing story. 

The original volume, issued in igi4 by Mitchell 
Kennerley, contained only the '^Sonnets of a Por- 
trait-Painter.^^ To this I have now added four other 
and shorter groups. Of these, '^Don Quixote/' 
''Rue des Vents/' and ''The Middle Years'' have 
appeared in The North American Review, to whose 
editors grateful acknowledgment is made for per- 
mission to republish. 

A. D. F. 

August, 1922. 



Sonnets of a Portrait-Painter i 

Don Quixote 55 

Rue Des Vents 63 

The Middle Years 81 

Epitaph for the Poet V. 89 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



TO FLOYD DELL 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAlT-PAlNTEft 



U 



APPOINTMENT 



TT needs no maxims drawn from Socrates 

■*■ To tell me this is madness in my blood. 

Nor does what wisdom I have learned from these 

Serve to abate my most unreasoned mood. 

What would I of you? What gift could you bring, 

That to await you in the common street 

Sets all my secret ecstasy awing 

Into wild regions of sublime retreat? 

And if you come, you will speak common words, 

Smiling as quite ten thousand others smile — 

And I, poor fool, shall thrill with ghostly chords, 

And with a dream my sober sense beguile. 

And yet, being mad, I am not mad alone : 

Alight you come I . . . That folly dwarfs my own. 



[I] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



II 

WALLS OF A CITY 

A thousand walls Immure your days, — and yet 
What are they all when, of the thousand, one 
Has fallen beneath the curious urge and fret 
Of you toward me, of me toward you begun? 
When the first fell, I shuddered half-aghast; 
The second, now a-crumble in my sight, 
Predicts less thunder than the fall late past; 
And I await the third with clear delight. 
Mingled with all the phantoms of my fear 
Are lights of utter lure. Wherefore I choose 
To linger watching, though right well I bear 
Knowledge that naught's to gain and much to lose,- 
And that there is reserved Hell's choicest flame 
For pairs of fools who play this silly game. 



[2] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



III 

ENIGMA 

By what confusion of things hoped or feared 

Did you become the wife of him who stands 

So passionless beside you? What endeared, 

Some day of Spring, his pale insensate hands 

So much that you desired to feel their weight? . . . 

I shall go mad if I dream long of this ! . . . 

I wonder if a shuddering "Too late I" 

Breathed from your lips when first you took his 

kiss? . . . 
All this was years ago. Now you are done, 
Both of you, with the things you feared or dreamed. 
Love, that wins seldom, this time has not won; 
Love's bones now glimmer where his eyes once 

gleamed. 
You will go on, the pair of you, till death 
Ordains you have drawn enough of foolish breath. 



[3] 



§ONisrETS OF A PORTHAIT-PAINTER 



IV 
MODERN LOVE 

Fate, with devoted and Incessant care, 

Has showered grotesqueness round us day by day. 

If we turn grave, a hurdy-gurdy's air 

Is sure to rasp across the words we say. 

If we stand tense on brink of perilous choices, 

'TIs never where Miltonlc headlands loom. 

But mid the sound of comic-opera voices 

Or the cheap blaze of some halr-dresser's room. 

Heaven knows what moonlit turrets, hazed In bliss, 

Saw Launcelot and night and Guinevere! 

I only know our first impassioned kiss 

Was In your cellar, rummaging for beer. ... 

Vile world ! that round us has made eager claim 

To smirch us with its crassness and its shame I 



[4] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



MINUET 

With what apt ceremony, with how much grace 

Of delicate wit and interchange of thought, 

Do the marked pair approach the end they sought, 

Each praising other's soul or book or face ; 

Yet in the end inevitably move 

Toward a goal different than they have professed. 

So love recurrently is only love, 

And books and brains are less than lips and breast. 

All this, I think, is well. Oh, very well I 

It keeps us human though we call us wise. 

No one, for being kind, has gone to hell ; 

And as we look' into each other's eyes 

We read some stories which we do not tell 

That make our earth more homelike than the skies. 



[5] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



VI 
UNMASKING-HOUR 

Dear fellow-actor of this little stage, 

We play the hackneyed parts right merrily, — 

Trifle with words drawn from the poet's page, 

And match our skill with cool and conscious eye. 

All gracious gestures of each shining role 

Have been the garments of our summer sport. . . . 

But now, when ominous thunders shake my soul, 

My reason gives of us no high report. . . . 

I could not mimic Romeo had I lain 

By Juliet's bier in bitter dizzy truth. 

Henceforth my mouthings, choked, inept, and vain, 

Will lack the light touch fitting amorous youth. 

Let fall the mask ! Let end the tinseled play ! 

Ghastly the footlights front this sudden day. 



[6] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



VII 

DEEP-SEA 

Over profoundest deeps, light lacy foam 
Plays where the sun-world frontiers meet the sea's. 
And in the deeps, slow gulf-tides have their home, 
Nor is the foam-crest utterant of these. 
Sail the bright surface on a summer's day, 
And you shall dream along each smiling crest, 
Making the waves companions of your play, 
Blind to the glooms within the ocean's breast. 
But when grey weather muffles up the blue. 
And thundering voices rise from hollow deeps, 
And coldly drooping wraith-mist out of view 
Inviolate the ancient mystery keeps, — 
Then would you know the secret ocean-world. 
Then dive I — a plummet through vast shadows 
hurled. 



[7] 



' ? 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



/ vm 

COSTUME DU BAL 

Why deck yourself with such unholy art 

When none of all this beauty is for me? 

I have two eyes; also, a living heart / 

That takes some impress from the things I see. 

Wherefore, I say, this cruelty tonight? — 

When you came forth in low-cut sweeping dress, 

With flaming lips, pale shoulders, eyes alight, — 

A cry of youth, a lamp of loveliness I 

O what nn evil in you has its nest 

That my poor writhings should assuage your will! 

A serpent coils within your warm white breast 

And sucks the nectar of this flower of ill. 

Yet . . . when I come, meet me, as thus tonight, — 

With flaming lips, pale shoulders, eyes alight I 



[8] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



IX 

HER PEDIGREE 

Your beauty is as timeless as the earth; 

All storied women live again In you : — 

Yet with some element of later birth, 

Some savor strange, some light troubling and new. 

You were not possible until today; 

For In your soul the risen Celtic wind 

Breathes audible; and tragic shadows grey 

From dark Norwegian winters tinge your mind. 

The pulse of the world's dreamers who have been 

Lemans of beauty, and grown faint thereby, — 

The fierce unrest of tollers who have seen 

Life as a cage of steam-shot agony, — 

Have woven round you, in the burning Now, 

A lure unknown to Helen's Phidlan brow. 



[9] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



TROUBADOURS 

Did not each poet amorous of old 

Plead the sweet pretext of the winged time 

To urge his lady that she be not cold 

To the dissolving master of that rhyme? 

I with no new importunings address 

One not less proud and beautiful than they 

Whose lovers breathed — "Fleet is thy loveliness; 

Let not its treasure slip unused away." 

Light hearts I Light words ! Here in my transient 

Spring 
Let them suffice to hide the things unsaid. 
No shadow from the lonely deeps I bring. 
Nay, I with gayest flowers will wreathe your head. 
Here in the sun I put apart from me 
Cassandra, Helen, and Persephone. 



[10] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XI 

APRIL MOMENT 

Come forth ! for Spring is singing in the boughs 
Of every white and tremulous apple-tree. 
This is the season of eternal vows; 
Yet what are vows that they should solace me? 
For on the winds wild loveliness is crying, 
And in all flowers wild joy its present worth 
Proclaims, as from the dying to the dying — 
''Seize, clasp your hour of sun upon the earth I" 
Then never dream that fire or beauty stays 
More than one April moment in its flight 
Toward regions where the sea-drift of all days 
Sinks in a vast, desireless, lonely night. 
What are eternal vows! — oh, give me breath 
Of one white hour here on the marge of death I 



["] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XII 

SPRING LANDSCAPE 

Take you my brushes, child of light, and lay 
Your colors on the canvas as you choose : — 
Paint me the soft glow of this crystal day; 
My harder touch would grasp them but to lose 
The rose-hung veils, the liquid golden flood, — 
I who with palette-knife must pry and strain 
To wrench from attitude, face, figure, mood, 
A living soul and limn its riddle plain. 
What need you teachings of my labored art? 
The brush will serve your April winsomeness. 
Yet . . . rather lay your head upon my heart — 
Draw me to you in a supreme caress, — 
That one day, as I paint some throat or hair, 
Spring's whole delight bloom like a marvel there ! 



ri2i 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XIII 

VIEW FROM HEIGHTS 

I am In love with high far-seeing places 
That look on plains half-sunlight and half-storm, — 
In love with hours when from the circling faces 
Veils pass, and laughing fellowship glows warm. 
You who look on me with grave eyes where rapture 
And April love of living burn confessed — 
The gods are good! The world lies free to cap- 
ture! 
Life has no walls. O take me to your breast ! 
Take me, — be with me for a moment's span ! — 
I am In love with all unveiled faces. 
I seek the wonder at the heart of man; 
I would go up to the far-seeing places. 
While youth Is ours, turn to me for a space 
The marvel of your rapture-lighted face ! 



[13] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XIV 

SUMMONS 

Ah, life is good ! and good thus to behold 

From far horizons where their tents are furled 

The mighty storms of Being rise, unfold. 

Mix, strike, and crash across a shaken world : — 

Good to behold their trailing rearguards pass, 

And feel the sun renewed its sweetness send 

Down to the sparkling leaf-blades of the grass. 

And watch the drops fall where the branches bend. 

I think today I almost were content 

To hear some bard life's epic story tell, — 

To view the stage through some small curtain-rent, 

Mere watcher at this gorgeous spectacle. 

But now the curtain lifts : — my soul's swift powers 

Rise robed and crowned — for lo ! the play is ours ! 



[H] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XV 

THE MEADOW 

Joy, like a faun, her beautiful young head 
Lifted from out the couches of the grass 
Where, but a moment since, pursued you fled; 
And smiled to hear your tripping footfall pass. 
For two passed by, — into the meadows gleaming 
With evening light across an amber stream. 
O Sweet! I marvel now, with all our dreaming, 
To find the sweetness sweeter than our dream. 
Now we return; and Joy amid her grasses 
Follows our steps with soft and curious eyes. 
Smiling to see, as your light figure passes. 
Your hand that in my hand so quiet lies. 
Wide laughing light across the fields is shed . . . 
Gravely Joy bends her beautiful young head. 



[IS] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XVI 
TROPICAL TEMPEST 

I have seen beauty where light stabs the hills 

Gold-shafted through a cloud of rosy stain. 

I have known splendor where the summer spills 

Its tropic wildness of torrential rain. 

I have felt all the free young dominance 

Of winds that walk the mountains In delight 

To tear the tree-trunks from their rooted stance 

And make the gorges thunderous of their might. 

The light, the torrents, and the winds, in you 

I thought I had perceived to kinship grown. 

It was a dream. Until this hour, I knew 

Nothing — nay, nothing all my days have known 

Where storm and cloud and sunlight held such part 

As when you came, and swept me to your heart. 



[i6] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



L 



XVII 
REVELATION 



It was the night, the night of all my dreams. 

Across the lofty spaces of that room 

You stole; and where the moonlight's silver streams 

Cloudily slanted In upon the gloom, 

More silver radiance met them where you moved; 

And all the beauty of the hazed west, 

Wherein the moon was sinking, lay approved 

Because thus lay your pale, slow-curving breast. 

I shall remember, — aye, when death must cover 

My soul and body with Its rayless tide, — 

The madness and the peace of that wild lover 

Drunken with life's whole wonder at your side. 

I shall remember In life's stormiest deep, — 

Even as that night I knew you there in sleep. 



[17] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XVIII 

ORATORIO 

O rare and holy, O taper lit for me 
Before vast altars in the lonely dark, — 
Without your gleam, dim were my soul to see 
Where in star-spaces, imperial and stark 
And sacrosanct, his ancient throned reign 
God holds o'er stars and swallows as of yore; 
Up through his Gothic vault I yearned in vain 
And turned back baffled from him evermore. 
In secular joys I must interpret heaven; 
In ecstasies profane I must embrace 
His glory, — seek in revels lightning-riven 
All I shall ever witness of his face, — 
And in wild flight, with passion winged and shod, 
Circle and beat the citadel of God. 



[18] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XIX 

THE VIOLIN 

The entrails of a cat, — some rusty wood, — 
Certain pegs, pins, in curious manner bent, — 
These yield the spirit in its singing mood 
The one supreme heaven-scaling instrument. 
And I, who rate man's clay not overmuch, 
Marvel not more when from the bow-swept strings 
Celestial music soars, than when we touch 
From mortal flesh strains of immortal things. 
To worlds beyond the world of its resort 
The viol uplifts its ecstasy or despair. — 
O love, who knows what white Hyperian court 
Welcomes our spirits, through the cloven air 
Rising, beyond the instrument set free 
On the wild wings of unloosed melody? 



[19] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XX 

POSSESSION 

Today, grown rich with what I late have won, 

Across the dusk I reach my hand to you. 

Cold as a leaf long pillowed on a stone 

Your hand takes mine, like something strange and 

new. 
So soon grown careless? . . . No, for in your eyes 
A tenderness still lives, half-shy, half-bold . . . 
Then sudden wisdom to my trouble cries: 
I know you still my love, but not the old. 
That which I loved and won now all is gone ; 
She was an hour, a moment, a swift mood, — 
Vanished forever into deeps unknown, — 
And a new creature rules your brain and blood. 
Yesterday you were mine, beloved and fair. 
Today I seek, — another love is there. 



[ao] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXI 

LIBERTY 

There stretch between us wonder-woven bonds, 
Fine as a thread but strong as braided steel, — 
A link that to each changing need responds, 
Nor binds the butterfly upon the wheel. 
For the coarse bondage sanctioned of men's law 
I would not, though I could, these gossamers 

change, — 
Give time and circumstance that leave to draw 
Closer the net till nearness must estrange ! 
And yet a longing restless in me burns 
To lock what never might the lock endure : — 
As a glad sailor, sea-impassioned, yearns 
That what he loves for being unsure, were sure, — 
That the fierce doubtful splendor of bright foam 
Might somehow, fierce and doubtful, light him 

home I 



[211 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXII 

SOME DAY 

I see the days stretch out in wavering line 
Toward that sure day when we shall lie in mould. 
What fate, I wonder, sordid or divine. 
Within their close-shut hands for us they hold? 
We have walked with the winds in chasmy places, 
And been as birds down sea-born tempests flung, — 
Seen joy and wonder on each other's faces, 
And learned that life is maddening still, and young. 
Will the slow days cancel, — or reconcile, — 
These with more sober meanings that they bring? 
Shall we part bitter, or with humorous smile, 
Or with heart- rent tragic remembering? — 
Or sink in friendship, each a tired guest 
Who finds the dreamless fireside slumber best? 



["] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXIII 

AT THE DANCE 

Now jewelled, alight, you lead the midnight dances. 
A thousand eyes, a hundred hearts are yours. 
In the great hall, the splendor of your glances 
With beauty's secret promise lights and lures. 
They flock to you ; you smile ; they press around you 
And crave your favors each with satyr smile. 
Does your look lie, or do they truly sound you 
With flatteries that your warming heart beguile? 
See — the low lustful thinly masked faces I 
They crowd about you, drinking in your bloom. 
In fancy, each a taxi calls, and races 
With you to his own Sybaritic room. . . . 
I sit alone beneath my desk-lamp's glare, 
Cursing the fate that made you mine, and fair. 



[23] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXIV 

SIDONIAN 

You are unworthy any man's desires. 
I do suspect you of a thousand ills — 
For little moths setting your little fires — 
Haughty to high, servient to baser wills. 
Rank ! that the meanest prancer in your train 
Can stir with languid love of lure your mood. 
Is it your weak pleasure, or his weaker pain, 
That gives sweet sustenance in this poor food? 
You have seen visions of high luminous dawn 
Coming to work a mircle in your heart : — 
But now are veils across your watching drawn 
Lest faith in viewless wonders plague your art. , 
This light vain woman ! What fit lash it were 
Could I reveal the dream I held of her I 



[24] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXV 
THE RIVAL 

What Is he but a common gutter-cur, 

A chattering mountebank, obese and base? 

And yet perhaps your judgment may prefer 

His grinning to my thin and furrowed face. 

My rival ! . . . How the word burns on my lips ! — 

Acknowledging equality, in that breath. 

With him who is my equal but where slips 

All form from life, and men are one in death. 

He is with you now: — what words now from him 

fall? 
What answering smile lights your alluring eyes? 
Madness leers at me, as my thoughts recall 
The love that late between us cried — and cries I . . . 
Well, go ! My mirth goes with you, who might be 
A lamp of earth, a bright star from the sea. 



[25] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXVI 
LIGHTNING-FLASH 



You are not peace, you are not happiness; 

I look not on you with content or trust ; 

Nor is there in you aught with power to bless 

Or heal my spirit weary of life's dust. 

No, you are that which, on a leaden day. 

As endless clouds sluggish with rain pass by, 

Leaps brilliant once across the sullen grey, 

A vivid lightning-gleam in that dead sky. 

And I, whose days of sun or cloud have grown 

Changelessly furled in one grey monstrous pall,- 

I thirst for fierce lights, triumphs, trumpets blown. 

And you, most wild and passionate of all, — 

You, the bright madness lightening the curse 

Of reason's dull reign in the universe^ 



[26] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXVII 

SURRENDER 

Today put by the tumult of our wars, 
Where, — strangely sexless in that struggle, — vie 
Our spirits, meeting mid the armored jars, 
Eager to thwart, to torture, to defy. 
Our souls were born for hostile dalliance. 
And you, if onslaught of your malice fail, 
Abase yourself, fain in my wounded glance 
To read exultant that your stings prevail. 
And yet, today, bar me not from my own. 
Now I yield all surrender that is yours. 
For we are weary; and, each one alone. 
We front a world whose loneliness endures. 
And there seem hours when o'er an evening deep 
We might drift home. ... I knew not you could 
weep ! 



[27] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXVIII 
SUMMER AFTERNOON 

Fields far below us, — silence in the wood, — 

Gold slanting rays down through green branches 

shed, — 
You, clear against the hazy golden flood, — 
And in your voice the summer as you said; 
"I loved you once because a dream had come 
Of what you might be, — and that was not you. 
And once I hated, since my heart was numb 
With pain to know my perfect hope untrue. 
And once to make you other than you were 
I would have mounted Calvary on bent knees. 
But now, — dear lover whom such tempests stir, — 
I am forever done with all of these. 
My love is yours : — be tender, fierce, or strange, — 
You still are you, unchanged through every change." 



[28] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXIX 

HOMEWARD 

I have not brought you asphodel, or laid 

Before you any pearl of happy prize. 

We have been as great eagles, unafraid 

Circling and grappling through tremendous skies. 

But evening closes ; and the tired wing 

Slants downward in slow earth-approaching flight. 

Over the regions of our voyaging 

Are drawn the holy curtains of the night. 

O weary one ! O pitiful waif of space ! 

Here gleams the haven to our troubled quest; 

This Is the land sought of your yearning face; 

This is the house dreamed of my lonely breast. 

We who have known all agonies and all bliss, — 

Can It then be we shall know happiness? 



[29] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXX 

CONFESSIONAL 

Now, O beloved, In this pausing hour, 

When peace, like a great river's twilight flow, 

Isles us about from every alien power. 

And all that hearts can know at last we know, — 

Now let me speak words that within my breast 

Have long, too long, dim to your passing view 

Lain darkling, by a thousand storms oppressed, — 

Now let me speak my holy love of you. 

The topless peaks, the pure unclouded skies 

That dwell remote within your spirit furled 

I have not sung; and yet they filled my eyes. 

Or how else had I sought you through the world? 

My humors and my madness, fierce or cold, 

I have told you all : my love I have not told. 



[30] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXXI 
ON DRIFTING WINGS 

Through vales of Thrace, Peneus' stream is flowing 

Past legend-peopled hillsides to the deep; 

From Paestum's rose-hung plains soft winds are 

blowing ; 
The halls of Amber He In haunted sleep; 
The Cornish sea is silent with the summer 
That once bore Iseult from the Irish shore; 
And lovely lone Flesole Is dumber 
Than when Lorenzo's garland-guests It wore. 
This eve for us the emerald clearness glowing 
Over the stream, where late was ruddy might, 
Whispers a wonder, dumb to other knowing, — 
Known but to you, the silence, and the night. 
Our boat drifts breathless; the last light Is dying; 
Stars, dawn, shall find us here together lying. 



[31] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXXII 
INDIAN SUMMER 

Low suns and moons, long days and spacious nights, 

With majesty move by us; and In state, 

Like buskined actors treading tragic heights, 

Enlarge the measure of our common fate. 

Across the great gold-hazed afternoon 

Drifts deeper meaning than our thought can prove; 

And happy dusks and happy dawns too soon 

Beyond our sight in calm procession move. 

Dear, hospitable, grows the murmuring earth; 

As lords at home, — masters returned from wars, — 

Rule we this realm whose summer-throned worth 

Admits no craving for the distant stars. 

Close suns and moons, wide nights and spacious 

days, — 
The Gods once sojourned in these earthly ways I 



[32] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 

XXXIII 
THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE 

!I held no trust in this, that it should last I 
Of no malignant fates stand I the sport. 
If any memory plague me with the past, 
I of most clear foreknowledge make retort. 
What are the powers that at earth's center live 
That such a dream as ours they should permit? 
Why, Heaven itself would have no more to give 
If Hell allow we should not wake from it! 
Dreaming, I saw beyond the curtained dream, — 
Half-conscious ever of the stubborn day 
Waiting to smite our turrets, high a-gleam. 
With armored siege of hurtling ray on ray. — 
What would you have, dear lady?^ — who, for love, 
Did ask the world that from its course it move? 



[33] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXXIV 

THE ALARM 

Well, now they know I The world's malicious arms 
Like snakes stretch out, like pistons batter down. 
Toward us the missiles of a thousand harms 
Are sped; our names delight the leering town. 
Corrupt Don Juans of the midnight mart 
To their lean spouses mouth our infamy. 
Wantons — whose sins, of flesh and not of heart, 
Leave them unscathed — prove virtue, passing by. 
Could we but flee the world's whole vile intent ! 
Might we but face it — ^bid it do its worst ! 
Yet vain the flight, and vain the argument. 
For the world's baseness are we made accursed. 
O love, bow down! Weep for the people's sin! 
The world, the flesh, the devil, always win! 



[34] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXXV 

LAST STAND 

What! shall all thwartlngs of malignant chance 
Set any bar to this impassioned trust? 
I will assail these gates of circumstance 
And break their Iron hinges to the dust. 
Nay! are you pallid in the eye of the sun? 
Do cold winds blow you from the midmost fire? 
Or does the journey ere 'tis well begun 
Speak with less eager lure to your desire? . . . 
Your look corrodes the metal of my heart. . . . 
Are we then tainted with a pallid "cast 
Of ghostly moonlight? All the foes that start 
From ambush do not fright me as this last, 
This sudden web of weakness round us grown. . 
One gate we cannot storm. It is our own. . . . 



A 



[35] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 

XXXVI 
RETURN FROM CYTHEREA 

You Will go back, — ^because he bids you come 
And stand with him to prove the tales untrue, — 
Until at last the whispers shall grow dumb, 
And men forget the thing they guessed or knew. 
And as the folly of an hour, at most. 
Our love shall be remembered down the years — 
A brightness dust-obscured, a vision lost, 
Shall be the secret of our passionate tears. 
To him, — I seem a rogue who half-succeeded. 
And you, frail beauty almost led astray. 
All the fierce splendor that our spirits needed 
Already fades, a ghost of yesterday. 
Well then, go back! Be a good wife and true. 
What can you say to me, or I to you? 



[36] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXXVII 
CLANGED ECHOES 

Last night I kissed you with a brutal might 
Whereof clanged echoes hunt me from my rest. 
And bitter on my lips that fierce delight 
Lingers, and bitter the pressure of your breast. 
I am shaken, still, by the tumult of that hour 
Before the dawn, when in some traitor-mood 
You, upon whom love's beauty kept no power, 
Lay vanquished by love's sensual habitude. 
And ere the cock-crow you denied us thrice, 
Being sure that all our daring dreams had lied. 
Like an arc of fire then leaped my sacrifice, 
My kiss of hate on the lips that had denied, — 
A gift of the flesh, since the soul you dared not 

meet. . . . 
And I longed that my kiss should strike you dead 

at my feet. 



[37] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXXVJII 
THE POTTER 

Then go. I do not want you. It is over. 
The flickerings of our dream have had their day. 
Imagine now that he who was your lover 
Has sunk in drink, or died, or moved away. 
And all that flamed between us once is older 
Than hopes that died before our lives began. 
Summer is done for us ; the dusks grow colder ; 
We are not gods, but futile woman and man. 
With ineffectual will and dazzled eyes 
We sought a faith beyond our power to make. . 
The potter, as the dizzying swift wheel flies. 
Must guard his spirit lest his fingers shake 
And the vase lie in ruin. ... It is over, — 
Potter, and pot, and bad clay, and weak lover. 



[38] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XXXIX 

TESTAMENT 

Friends, when I die, — you who were friends in- 
deed, — 
Looking upon the tarnished fame whose blind 
And battered mirror I shall leave behind, — 
When to defend your love you have sore need, 
Say then: — "He strove a little in his youth 
Along the measured ways the world calls fair; 
And in good time he could have triumphed there 
In open honor and unclouded truth. 
But life confounded him; life, far too great 
For measured ways, insistent at his ears 
Played its wild symphony of laughter, tears. 
Desires, defeats, and undiscovered fate; 
And he went down, still doubtful of his goal 
But still a-dream with it — seeking his soul." 



[39] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XL 

RETROSPECT 

I have divested my dim spirit now 
Of its great ornament, and bid go by 
Beyond the call of any prayer or vow 
The star so long the center of my sky. 
Void, grey and limitless, now lies ahead — 
Where my strange orbit, circling on alone, 
Through regions of the living or the dead 
May find wide gulfs that shall for light atone.- 
Wide gulfs, bleak darkness, iron ecstasy 
Amid my blind and frozen fellow-stars ! — 
Some flight of more than human history, 
Some peace more terrible than all life's wars, 
Some undiscovered depth of ancient night ! — 
But never you, never again the light. 



[40] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLI 

VISION OF BEATRICE 

What Beatrice was, so much you are 

To me now wandering with an exile's eyes 

In regions whence no road to paradise 

Mounts, and the solace glimmers of no star. 

There stretch between us gulfs of many a war; 

The ancient hills to sunder us arise. 

And yet I crave, from Fate that all denies, 

You near in dream, who are In truth so far. . . . 

"Though all the powers that thwart your life and 

mine 
Thereto consent, yet can I never be 
Your Beatrice. I can never shine 
Pale, starry in your heaven; nay, unto me 
One lot alone my stormy fates assign — 
To leave you, — or to clasp you utterly!" 



[41] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLII 
LOST SUMMER 

I needs must know that in the days to come 
No child that from our Summer sprang shall be 
To give our voices when the lips are dumb 
That lingering breath of immortality. 
Nay, all our longing compassed not such hope, 
Nor did we, in our flame-shot passagings. 
Push the horizon of our visions' scope 
To regions of these far entangled things. 
I knew not such desire. But now I know. — 
O perfect body ! O wild soul a-flower ! 
We, wholly kindled by life's whitest glow. 
Turned barren from our life-commanding hour. . 
Now while I dream, sweetness of that desire 
Lies on my heart like veils of parching fire. . . , 



[42] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLIII 
REINCARNATION 

What if some lover in a far-off Spring, 
Down the long passage of a hundred years, 
Should breathe his longing through the words I 

sing— 
And close the book, dazed by a woman's tears? 
Does it mean aught to you that such might be? . . . 
Ah ! we far-seekers ! . . . Solely thus were proved 
From dream to deed the souls of you and me : — 
Thus only were it real that we had loved. 
Grey ghosts blown down the desolate moors of 

time! 
Poor wanderers, lost to any hope of rest I 
Joined by the measure of a faltering rhyme! 
Sundered by deep division of the breast I — 
Sundered by all wherein we both have part; 
Joined by the far-world seeking of each heart. 



[43] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLIV 
MOON-ARCHERY 

This is a record of what has not been, 
Is not, and never while time lasts can be. 
It is a tale of lights down rain-gusts seen, — 
Of midnight argent mad moon-archery. 
Ah, life that vexes all men plagued us most! 
And made us motes in winds that blew from far, — 
Credulous of the whispers of a ghost, — 
Fain of the light of some long-quenched star. 
What were you that I loved you? What was I 
That I perturbed you? Shapes of restless sleep! 
A shadow from a cloud that hurried by, — 
A ripple of great powers that stirred the deep. 
And we, too supple for life's storms to break, 
Writhed at a dream's touch, for a shadow's sake I 



[44] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLV 
NOVEMBER DUSK 

There are strange shadows fostered of the moon, 
More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day. . . . 
Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June, 
Into the dusk of swooping bats at play, — 
Or go into that late November dusk 
When hills take on the noble lines of death. 
And on the air the faint astringent musk 
Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath. — 
Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun 
Knows nothing, — aye, a thousand shadows there 
Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run. 
Like petrels of the changing foul or fair, — 
Like ghosts of twilight, of the moon, of him 
Whose homeland lies past each horizon's rim. . . . 



[45] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XL VI 
THE TORRENT 



The clouds that steal across the sun of June 
Are swift; and out of them the sun comes free. 
The mists that drift beneath the flying moon 
Reveal new brightness of her wizardry. 
Not so the shadows that on the spirit fall, 
Moving like torrents that wind the mountain-steep. 
Down from the slopes they bear beyond recall 
Earth and flowers; their pathway is graven deep. 
They wear the iron rock; they change the hills; 
The slopes are torn; the peaks fall; the vales flood 

wide. 
And when the waters cease, and sound of rills 
Remains, the battle's echo, down the mountain-side. 
Passers-by shall marvel, in far-off days — 
''Here lie forever the torrent's ancient ways!" 



[46] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLVII 

WINTER WINDS 

Across the shaken bastions of the year 
March drives his windy chariot-wheels of cold. 
Somewhere, they tell me, Spring is waiting near 
But all my heart is with things grey and old : — 
Reliques of other Aprils, that are blown 
Recklessly up and down the barren earth; 
Mine the dull grasses by the Winter mown, 
And the chill echoes of forgotten mirth. 
Spring comes, but not for me. I know the sign 
And feel it alien. I am of an age 
That passes. All the blossoms that were mine 
Lie trampled now beneath December's rage. 
Ye children of the Spring, may life be sweet! 
For me, the world crumbles beneath my feet. 



[47] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLVIII 



y^' 



A man's castle 



Drawn are the curtains, for the day is done. 

Over this garden silence now is spread. 

In the unequal contest, night has won; 

Love and the days of loving both are dead. 

But raised above the abysses of the gloom 

That make my garden like a lair of night, 

I hold the lonely ramparts of this room, 

I stoop before the hearth, I kindle light, 

And in a moment foster its small blaze 

Into keen splendor. The chaotic sky 

Sucks up the stored warmth of the summer days 

Into its wastes of dumb infinity. 

But cannot wring my prayers or plot my fall 

Where here I guard my flame against them all. 



[48] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



XLIX 

THE TIDINGS 

They brought me tidings; and I did not hear 

More than a fragment of the words they said. 

Their further speech died dull upon my ear; 

For my rapt spirit otherwhere had fled — 

Fled unto you in other times and places. 

Old memories winged about me in glad flight. 

I saw your lips of longing and delight, — 

Your grave glad eyes beyond their chattering faces. 

I saw a world where you have been to me 

More than the sun, more than the wakening wind. 

I saw a brightness that they could not see. 

And yet I seemed as smitten deaf and blind. 

I heard but fragments of the words they said. 

Life wanes. The sunlight darkens. You are dead. 



[49] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



L 

ECHOES OF SILENCE 

Out of the dusk Into whose gloom you went, 
Answer me, tell me, why you chose to go? 
Why did you seek that far-strewn firmament? 
Was loneliness not keen enough below? 
Did some old wrong affright you? Some new ill? 
Did one more bloom that lured you turn to dust? 
What spur could goad that lovely weary will. 
What hopeless calm, what storm of shaken trust? 
Across the giant waste of this unknown 
Must I forever send my questionings? 
Had you no word to leave me for my own 
Before you went? Must my imaginings 
Deem you forgot? — Or did your heart foretell 
fhat time's whole later hush would speak farewell? 



[so] 



SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT-PAINTER 



LI 
THE METEOR 

Now from the living fountains of my thought 

Spring streams of comfort, crystalline and mild, 

To cool the wound the sudden stroke has wrought 

And bid my heart in peace be reconciled. 

My spirit whispers — "From this meteor flown, 

Draw knowledge of the stars, now all is done. 

Assign it station in some system known, 

Part of the ordered brightness round the sun." 

Good counsel! — reconcile, transmute, remould 

To earth's conglomerate mass this unconfined 

Pilgrim of sky, — or label it, grown cold, 

To edify a chaos-fearing mind? . , . 

Love, love, I keep memorial of you I Nay I — 

Unsolved, bright, lonely, till my Judgment Day I 



[51] 



DON QUIXOTE 



TO WITTER BYNNER 



DON QUIXOTE 



npHEY told Don Quixote he was old and dazed, 

Ill-born, a pauper, not a knight at all, 
A thing to make the very crows amazed 
With the grotesqueness of his spectacle. 
I think his words of answer spoke but part 
Of his defence against the worldly crew; 
I think great lights were flashing in his heart 
Whereof he told not, and they never knew. 
I think he saw all that they saw and more — 
The gaunt and tattered knight, the sorry frame ; 
But cared not, knowing that his bosom bore 
The living embers of a vanished flame. 
And that his memory guarded now alone 
The history of a beauty that was gone. 



[55] 



DON QUIXOTE 



II 

^'However," said the Bachelor Carrasco, 

''Some souls there be, reading your history, 

Who wish the author had not rlumbered so 

The bafflements that were your misery 

And foil, most noble knight!" But Sancho, wise, 

Spoke that thick candor which is half his zest : 

"In these falls lies the history; all were lies 

With these left out; and truth, gadzooks, is best I" 

"Aye, truth to mortal eyes!" the old knight said, 

"But such a truth might well have been let go. 

Things that light not the living nor the dead 

Are of small profit for our brains to know. 

Prove that the real JEne^s was a knave, 

And have you then stirred Virgil in his grave?" 



[56] 



DON QUIXOTE 



III 

Don Quixote died a sane man; at his bed 

The curate and the barber marvelling stood, 

Admiring his new wisdom as he said 

Clear words, abjuring in his dying mood 

All of the far adventurings, cursing all 

The old enchantments, casting out all fays 

Of mad romances that had sounded call 

So clarion-like to his knight-errant days. 

Thus drew the high strange tragedy to its close ; 

Thus the great dupe and dreamer ebbed, was gone. 

Madmen end ill, as everybody knows ; 

The barber and the curate, they lived on. 

Poor knight! God viewed thee with a jealous eye 

Since mad and great He would not let thee die. 



[57] 



DON QUIXOTE 



IV 

Dearest of all the heroes ! Peerless knight 
Whose follies sprang from such a generous blood! 
Young, young must be the heart that In thy fight 
Beholds no trace of its own servitude. 
Young, or else darkened, is the eye that sees 
No image of its own fate in thy quest. 
The windmills and the swine, — by such as these 
Is shaped the doom of those we love the best. 
Beloved knight ! La Mancha's windows gleam, 
Across the plain time makes so chill and grey, 
With thy light only. Still thy flambeaux stream 
In pomp of one who on his destined day 
Put up his spear, his knightly pennon furled. 
And died of the unworthiness of the world. 



[58] 



DON QUIXOTE 



Great ghost I who In the autumn of the year, 
When through gaunt branches terrible winds that 

blow 
Seem whispering to us, seem more close and dear 
Than all the human voices that we know — 
Great ghost! who loved uncomprehended space 
And were so fevered with immortal time, 
Who dreamed that heaven lit up one chosen face, 
And trusted fantasies crowded into rhyme — 
Be not too far from us ; come, at the pane 
Flatten your pale face and look in on us: 
We also are of those who live in vain; 
Like you we are noble and ridiculous; 
Like you we haunt a savage autumn night 
In dizzy errantries of lonely flight. 



[59] 



RUE DES VENTS 



TO MAURICE BROWNE 



RUE DES VENTS 



TT was an old house; and there seemed to live 

Along Its mousey corridors still a gloom 
Of lives long-cancelled. In my quiet room 
Among my books, I could hear fugitive 
Hesitant faint Intrusions that withdrew 
Before they had entered to my presence there. 
The very light was thick, and on the stair 
The darkness glowed and flickered. So I knew 
I was at home here; for on every side 
Beyond these walls life to me thus had seemed 
Always a hush where ancient voices hide — 
A dusk where candles had but lately gleamed — 
A masque of those who went and us who bide — 
A dream that many another ghost has dreamed. 



[63] 



RUE DES VENTS 



II 

Here in the quiet chambers that I love 

Evening falls gently; from the garden, cries 

Of laughing children float; and high above 

The old roofs, toward the western glow, there 

flies 
A swallow from the south thus early come 
To seek a summer that Is still a dream. 
The chestnut buds to woolly pods have grown 
Green-lit beyond the window where I lean. 
Summer Is singing, and the night Is still 
With Hstening to that song; I too, oppressed 
By some old faith in beauty, yield my will 
To that which lights the gold lights of the west, — 
And long for summer though it come again 
With dreams of beauty and with proof of pain. 



[64] 



RUE DES VENTS 



III 

This is the dusk-hour when for old love's sake 

Ghosts in this garden might arise and move 

Down vanished paths, and memories might awake 

Out of the death that is so chill to love. 

You whose old sins have in the later time 

Become a legend perilous and sweet 

With tragic whisperings of courtly rhyme, — 

Lovely dead chatelaine ! — are these your feet 

That now across my silence slowly pace 

Thrilling the darkness of this garden-close? 

Turn! . . . No, this Is no golden harlot's face, — 

This Is the bud that Is not yet the rose, 

This Is a ghost of things that never were, 

This is a child. The dusk grows sweet with her. 



[65] 



RUE DES VENTS 



IV 

Be wise, be wise, O heart forever seeking 

A wine whose fever must the goblet break I 

Let now the Sleeping Beauty lie a-sleeping; 

Her lips could not speak sweeter did she wake. 

Her dreams may last some happy moments still 

Before the dawn^s first resonance of grey 

Shall stir the east and, growing swiftly, fill 

Her soul with joy and terror of the day. 

Yet as the Sleeper lifts her quiet eyes 

And to my troubled gaze their laughing glow 

With loveliness and love of love replies, 

I know that she has dreamed more than I know- 

And lights outshining wisdom flush and start, 

And summer sweeps wild wings across my heart. 



[66] 



RUE DES VENTS 



Psyche I whose fairness of the rain-swept brow 

And delicate breast and smooth unquiet hair 

So long have filled my dreams, — what wonder now 

That I again come and again find fair 

The curve and color of these vestments worn 

In mortal semblance for a little while? 

Out of the far isles of the past reborn 

You still keep, as in marble, this dim smile — 

And I, the recurrent mortal lover, follow 

Your pale recurrent dream of youthful love. 

And seek as seeks in April's track the swallow 

To trail your secret footsteps as you move; 

Even like the swallow little knowing why 

Your look should light the earth and flush the sky. 



[67] 



RUE DES VENTS 






VI 



This day is all a greyness of dim rain. 
Earth and the sky alike are wrapped in fold 
Of the dim memory of some ancient pain, 
Some wrong of bitter gods endured of old; 
All grey and spent, save where I see you move 
With lifted golden head and laughing eyes 
And breast so delicate that no power but love 
Could dwell there with his singing sorceries. 
Proud little head, lifted amid the gloom I 
Gay serious little heart, swift-running feet I 
Into the shadowed broodings of this room 
You bring the light of regions far and sweet 3 
Your laughter is a song, a golden beam 
Out of the western rain-mist of my dream. 



[68] 



RUE DES VENTS 



VII 

When round you falls the silence of the dark, 

Then golden caravels on magic seas 

From you as from the world's edge might embark 

To lands of light and isles of mysteries. 

As on the slow tide of the violin 

It seems that from the cool slope of your breast 

My drowsed and gliding spirit's dreams might win 

To unimagined silence of the west — 

That beauty might so hush and daze the night 

Love could transcend the bosom whence it sprang, 

And fading on horizons of far flight 

The song forget the summer lips that sang. 

And into an undying summer soar 

Where cloud and sky are one with sea and shore. 



[69] 



RUE DES VENTS 



i^ VIII 

Your body's beauty is an air that blows 
Out of some garden where the Spring has come- 
Where never yet has faded any rose 
And never any singing bird is dumb. 
You are white waterfalls in piney woods 
Touched by the freshness of October wind. 
You. are the slim young silver moon that broods 
Over a dusk where lovers wander blind. 
And how shall these eyes ever have their fill 
Of you, alight with loveliness and love — 
My starlight water, tremulous or still, 
Across which music wakens as you move I 
Over the floor laughing and white you pass. . . , 
I see all April light that ever was. 



[70] 



RUE DES VENTS 



IX 

When the mad tempest of the blood has died 
And sleep comes on, still I am half aware 
Of the long sloping music of your side, 
And windy light is round me with your hair. 
I move through dusks between the day and night 
Where night and day and vision intertwine; 
The breast of Her who was the gods' delight 
Touches a cheek I vaguely know is mine. 
Doubt and believing mingle while there stirs 
Your hand that wakens mine out of its dream; 
Hope knows not what is hers, nor Memory hers, 
Amid the marble curves that change and stream; 
And only Beauty, through dim lights, can claim 
These hours that have no time or place or name. 



[71] 



RUE DES VENTS 



happy heart, O heart of loveliness ! 
Against the morning you lift up your face, 
And smile against the morning's smile, no less 
Beautiful than her beauty; and the grace 

Of her long-limbed and sweet processional hours 
Is but attendant on your morning laughter. 
Trailing her wreaths and scattering her flowers, 
Where your light footsteps go, she follows after — 
Follows your feet with sunlight. . . . Till we are 
Silent again and lonely, where there rise 
Dark evening trees, over them one great star, 
While other stars come slowly to the skies — 
And hand in hand, where the world goes to rest 

1 am lost in wonder, and silent is your breast 



[72] 



RUE DES VENTS 



XI 



L> 



Your beauty shall not save you from despair 

In after-days when life is not so sweet 

Along the garden-paths. That you were fair 

And well-beloved, can it ease your feet 

Down through the dark upon whose edge I stand 

And see the shadows deepening on ahead 

Even to the borders of the empty land 

Where beauty ends and all the dreams are dead? 

Child I drink the sunlight of this perfect hour 

Which makes a slender blossom of your breast I 

Time has gone dreaming, that your heart may 

flower; 
And while he sleeps, be happy. That is best; 
And laugh in triumphing beauty, even at one 
Who in each flower sees flowers that now are gone. 



[73] 



RUE DES VENTS 



XII 



Here at my window, in the waning light 
Of afternoon, with serious bended head 
You labor at a letter; as you write, 
I wonder — can words say what should be said? 
I wonder if the misspelled lines can hold 
Anything of this rapt and dreaming face, 
The delicate brow, the carven wavy gold. 
The white neck bent in dim abstracted grace? 
That lad in battle to whom your message flies — 
I in my madness wish that he could share 
This hour. No inky page of your replies 
Could speak to him as speaks this gold-shot hair 
To me who linger, near yet more afar 
Than you, boy, can be, wheresoever you are. 



t74] 



RUE DES VENTS 



XIII 



Since beauty holds no lease of settled date, 
And youth has tenure but while roses blow, 
And mortal hope must yield to mortal fate, 
And every dream that comes must one day go — 
Since these most lovely phantoms cannot be 
Companions in the grey years that confess 
Wild love to hold life's chiefest sovereignty. 
Yet must without it seek for happiness — 
Then let the autumn of the soul become 
Transfigured with its own appropriate hues; 
As in high pageant, when the flowers are dumb. 
Old forests lift the splendor earth must lose. 
And hills with solemn foliage of the fall 
Outvaunt the spring, in phantom festival. 



[75] 



RUE DES VENTS 



XIV 

Go by! but go not lightly; as you pass 

Send back such gleam as the departing sun 

Pours down the hill-slopes where the fading grass 

Turns to a path of gold. The day is done 

And evening stars come on. Yet you shall rise 

Tomorrow to a world once more complete. 

And green shall be the valleys to your eyes 

And fair shall be the paths before your feet. 

But as you tread your way across the earth, 

Look back sometimes, beloved, and recall 

I taught you love and laughter at their worth; 

And of the bitterness, I knew it all 

And would have spared you, had the power been 

mine . . . 
Dreams, dreams again! There is no anodyne. 



[76] 



RUE DES VENTS 



XV 

Birds that are beautiful and sing in the sun 

Fly southward when the summer day is done. 

Oh may the fountains of the golden south 

Be worthy of your delicate thirsting mouth I 

-Oh may the magic of the tropic isles 

Where the great palm trees lift their tufted crests 

Answer the light and music of your smiles 

And may the waves curl gently round your breasts. 

Southward as goes the swallow to the sun 

May you go ever till the race be run — 

And at the end, may Time whose terrible feet 

With the swift splendor of your limbs compete, 

May he be merciful, and just at the goal 

Smite suddenly the beautiful body and soul. 



[77] 



THE MIDDLE YEARS 



TO EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 



THE MIDDLE YEARS 



'1T70MEN In mirrors, I am told, may see 

The wings of beauty as, with anxious eye, 
They trace the legend of mortality 
And day by day watch the old magic die. 
In different wise, I in my glass behold 
The flight of what no springtime can replace, 
And start with terror of things grim and old 
When chance confronts me with my mirrored face- 
Where the long seasons have engraven deep 
So many an epitaph of satiric rhyme 
And sent so many a flaming light to sleep 
And branded immortality so with time, 
That where a stranger might see youth alone 
I view the ghosts of things that now are gone. 



[8i] 



THE MIDDLE YEARS 



II 



This IS the burden of the middle years : 

To know what things can be, or not be, known; 

To find no sunset lovely unto tears ; 

To pass not with the swallow southward-flown 

Toward far Hesperides where gold seas break 

Beyond the last horizon round strange isles; 

To have forgot Prometheus on his peak; 

To know that pilgrim-miles are only miles. 

Then death seems not so dreadful with its night 

That keeps unstirred a veil of mystery. 

Then no acclaimed disaster can affright 

Him who is wise in human history 

And finds no godhead there to earn his praise 

And dreads no horror save his empty days. 



[82] 



THE MIDDLE YEARS 



III 

Not all my will can change this casque of bone 

That predetermines what each thought must be; 

And I have learned to bear with these my own 

Enforced defects and doomed futility, 

And with reproach no longer rack a skull 

Whose rigid plan, conditioned long ago. 

Left such low arches for the beautiful 

To pour its summer light through. Now I know 

Somewhat the measure of what may be done 

And may not by this child of a dark race 

Who In the long processions of the sun 

Today for a brief moment takes his place. 

I bid him bear his banner with the rest, 

Nor too much blame the dusk that haunts his breast. 



[83] 



THE MIDDLE YEARS 



IV 

I can more tranquilly behold the stars 

Than once I could. Their alien majesty 

Awakes in me no longer desperate wars 

Against their far indifference circling by. 

For I too have my orbit, and intent 

Upon its rondure I no less than they 

Decline the test of warlike argument. 

They go their several ways ; I go my way. 

Nothing of all my hopes have they denied, 

Nor do I storm against them as of old. 

We pass, the sovereigns of an equal pride. 

Some day shall I be dead and they be cold. 

Until that hour, untroubled in our flight 

We seek our own paths through the spacious night. 



[84] 



THE MIDDLE YEARS 



It thunders In the west, where the clouds roll 
Ominously; and as the winds arise 
Once more the lightnings cry out to my soul. 
How often have I stood with passionate eyes 
On some bare hilltop whence the miles of plain, 
By sudden flashes torn forth from their sleep, 
Were for an instant scrutable, till again 
Atlantis-like they sank to oceans deep. 
And such is life's true image: no clear day 
On plain-lands luminous and defined and grave — 
But a wild dusk where flashes, far away. 
Swiftly illumine shores that from the wave 
Are for a moment lifted, soon to be 
Merged once again in the concealing sea. 



[85] 



THE MIDDLE YEARS 



VI 

What good, I ask myself, what fortunate thing 

Amid so many evils that we taste 

Do these strange years of middle-passage bring 

Where thief and rust and moth have so made waste? 

And as I count them over one by one — 

Patience and prudence and more generous thought — 

I see none here to match the great gifts gone 

Nor any fit atonement time has brought. 

— Save perhaps one : the calm and certain will 

Whose baffled purpose still relentless goes 

Across the world, unconquerable still. 

Seeking the unknown goal that well it knows — 

Like a bleak eagle that with blinded eye 

Drives on its way across the wind-swept sky. 



[86] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 
[a hymn to intellectual beauty] 



TO EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



TT is ordained, — or so Politian said, — 

That he who by some dryad-haunted brook 
Or silver bathing-pool or secret glade 
Shall, wandering in the dusk, suddenly look 
Upon a naked goddess at her bath, — 
He from that hour leaves happiness behind, 
And doomed to all the splendor of her wrath 
Returns as did Teiresias, smitten blind: — 
*vBlind to the common and decaying things, 
Blind to the dying summer and the dust. 
Blind to the crumpled wall, the broken wings, 
The yellow leaf, the sword ruined with rust; 
Blind, blind to all save the wild memory 
Of Beauty naked against a stormy sky. 



[89] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



II 

For Beauty kissed your lips when they were young 

And touched them with Her fatal triumphing, 

And Her old tune that long ago was sung 

Beside your cradle haunts you when you sing. 

Wherefore there is no light in any face 

To win you from these memories as you roam ; 

Far though you seek, you shall not find a place 

Wears the mysterious twilight-glow of home. 

You are an exile to those lonely lands 

Far out upon the world's forsaken rim 

Where there is never touch of meeting hands, — 

Always you must go on, through spaces dim. 

Seeking a refuge you can never know — 

Wild feet that go where none save Beauty's go ! 



[90] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



Ill 

Beauty — what is it? A perfume without name: 
A sudden hush where clamor was before : 
Across the darkness a faint ghost of flame: 
A far sail, seen from a deserted shore. 
Out of the dust and terror it can spring 
And be, for us, all that there never was : 
The sun lives only to illume Her wing 
Which rises, hovers, soars, and soon must pass 
Into high chaos once again. But now 
While She still lingers round us in mad flight 
We shall revive the vigor of our vow. 
Assured that all our hopeless love Was right. 
And watch the wings that fade, pale, and are gone, 
Knowing that they are life, and they alone. 



[91] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



IV 

In Beauty's name, I love you. Life's grim story 

Is swept with rainbow lights when you draw near. 

A singular and inescapable glory 

Comes from the sun when thoughts of you are here. 

Your presence is not anything, or not much; 

But when your dreams come whispering to my doors 

I leave my crumbling house, — lift wing, — fly, — 

clutch 
Great battlements, and walk legendary floors. . . . 
Poor dust ! poor ignorant instrument of great powers 
That through you blow their silver trumpet-cry! 
How savage is this destiny of ours 
That fashions music out of agony, 
And lets us hear, across the iron night, 
The wing-beats of each other's lonely flight! 



[92] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



Not till the temples of our secret trust 

Are blown in mist across a rainy sky, 

And music crumbles wholly into dust, 

And carven marbles into silence die — 

Not until what we dream and what we know 

Are merged and made inseparably the same, 

And beauty dead a thousand years ago 

Ceases to haunt us with a living flame — 

Not till the harvest of slow-ripening Time 

Is brought in golden sheaves triumphant home 

And planets round into the perfect rhyme 

Of death after their million years aroam — 

Not until then shall any strangeness move 

From its fixed place the strangeness of our love. 



[93] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



VI 



This is the deep security of our love — 
The faith that neither, widowed, can survive 
To view an earth where dreary pigmies move 
Down paths where once the gods were so alive; 
For we have made our compact out-of-time 
And marked our passion with a fabled date 
And had our banns inscribed in druid rhyme : 
Unto our feast no guest shall come too late. 
There is a music in the upper air 
That shall deny to me if you are dead. 
A summer wind will whisper in your hair 
Though all except the name of me be fled. . . . 
Ah, radiance of two spirits one must wear 
When in the end the other bows his head ! 



[94] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



VII 

If you went out of this strange world tonight, — 
This world of flesh that is the one I know, — 
And joined the legends of our lost delight, 
And were as dead as Helen, ages ago, — 
It would be a dim world you left behind, 
One without reason, and incredible. 
I think that I should know how move the blind 
Or the doomed souls who grope their way through 

hell. 
And yet there is no heaven, to pay for this 
Grim possibility that I dare to view. 
You dead, I dead, — how would the other miss 
The torture that I was, and that was you ! 
How would the lingerer love the other I — when 
No one was left to make life mad again I 



[95] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



VHI 



To US who are beyond all loves and wars, — 
To us, — who keep no faithfulness of trust 
In anything but sea-winds and wild stars 
And horror and a sudden laugh and dust, — 
The gifts that can be given are few and rare. 
There are no jewels yet mined for me to set 
Upon your haunted breast; and for your hair 
The seas have made no fitting pearls, as yet. 
But you, — one thing be still content to give 
Where here I watch the dusks go down in fire : 
A love of loving, far and fugitive, — 
A faith in beauty and the heart's desire, — 
A sudden sense of that which might befall 
Could life be nothing and our dreams be all. 



[96] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



IX 



I cry to you — and like a windy mist 

My words go past you : it is well they do. . . , 

Not any kiss that you or I have kissed 

Loses or gains from what I bring to you. . . . 

Not anything that life has ever told 

Has whispered what I come to you to learn. 

And a flame whiter than the arctic cold 

Is what I speak of when I say — I burn I . . . 

Go by, image ! Go by, immortal dust ! 

It was your destiny to make manifest 

The god again : unfathomable, your trust 

Nurtured the deity at a virgin breast, 

Holy, and lonely, and immaculate, — 

And branded with your fate and with my fate. 



[97] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



We meet in lands of longing where there are 
No jealousies to poison love's bright lips 
With faith or with fidelity. Does a star 
Secrete itself in shadows of eclipse 
Save for one eye alone? Or must a wall 
Shut in a garden from the general sun 
Because one spirit, dearest of them all, 
Walks there a dreaming hour when day is done? 
Nay, with more certainty of love, we know 
Nothing diminishes what is yours and mine ; 
As richer with all other loves you grow, 
The dearer is your wealth that I divine; 
All that enchants you is a golden glow — 
Ripening the grapes of our communion-wine. 



[98] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



XI 

Against mine eyes let your dreams beat their wings 

Blindlngly bright, as they so long have done. 

And let the music that your bosom sings 

Sing still to me : It sings to me alone. 

Here In the murk and mystery of the earth, 

Where strangers wed, and foemen dwell as friends, 

And brothers cease their brotherhood at birth. 

And who as son begins, as alien ends, — 

Here send again those blinding dreams that come 

Singing and crying out of your wild heart — 

Let them to me, to only me, turn home — 

For they are mine, — they are another part 

Of my own soul, somehow afar and free — 

Tin your voice sings them dizzily back to me I 



[99] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



n 



xn 



Above the region of eternal snow, 

Where on the ultimate icy granite peak 

The sun shines always, and there always blow 
Clear singing winds, — there might we stand and 

speak 
Truly and tenderly. . . . We have moved apart 
Ever from the confusions of the earth: 
We have been acquiescent, with half a heart, 
To those necessities which gave us birth, — 
But we have honored or believed them never. . . . 
— Is it that we were dream-befooled, or wise? 
Were we too dull, or too perversely clever? 
Was it conceit or wisdom sealed our eyes? . . . 
What we have sought, — is it a quickening light, 
Or but the aurora of an Arctic night? 



[ICO] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



xni 

Thanks to our happy fate, we two shall meet 
Never more humanly than heretofore. 
No enmity of chance shall guide our feet 
^Down paths of dreaming toward one twilight door. 
For In that little room there were no place 
For the great promise that we two have made 
Of marvelous glow upon each other's face : 
We should be lonely there, and half-afraid. 
There, if we met, two Titans would arise 
Between our breasts, passionate to proclaim 
We were but strangers to each other's eyes — 
Bleak ghosts without a fragrance or a name — 
Pale wicks that sent once a preposterous light 
Of lying signal through the hollow night. 



[lOl] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



XIV 



In parable alone we speak the truth 
And in the interludes of a troubled dream, 
On this wide platform between age and youth, 
And name as nothing all the things that seem. 
— ^A swamp of violets stretches from my feet 
To an horizon violet-hued with dawn. — 
And need you say that loveliness is sweet. 
Or need I say that all the best is gone? , . . 
As actor, liar, prophetess, and child 
You cross in curious paths the mortal plain 
Where to be virtuous is to be defiled. 
Where to be happy is to drown in pain, — 
Where home is in the bosom of the wild, — 
And to have loved is to have loved in vain. 



[102] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



XV 

In times hereafter, when there shall be told, 
To light man's legend with heroic glory. 
The chronicle of the famous loves of old. 
Enriching with their passion life's bleak story, — 
Of some shall be recounted sacrifice, 
Or courage, or how pitifully they died. 
Or what tumultuous madness swept their eyes. . . 
But us let Time remember for our pride. 
Let men hereafter know, that never two 
Did with serener arrogance bend their glance 
Downward upon the human world they knew 
And cut the knots of mortal circumstance 
And turn to worlds where only shadows move. 
Their faces lit with the great pride of their love. 



[ 103] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



XVI 

And these shall be an elegy for you, — 

These groping syllables out of many years, 

Mixed of things felt or dreamed, things false or 

true. 
No one shall guess what mockery or tears 
Or pitying smiles or dizzy lighted eyes 
Between us made communion, or if dumb 
Our lips were . . . There are certain destinies 
That have a home beyond what men call home. . . . 
But if you should survive me, come, some day, 
To where, not knowing anything, I shall lie — 
And look down at the stupid mound of clay, 
And look up at the splendor of blue sky, — 
And know that neither you nor I could know 
All that our love meant to us, long ago. 



[ 104] 



EPITAPH FOR THE POET V. 



-x 



XVII 

Peculiar ghost! — great and immortal ghost! . . 
How many generations before mine 
Have you not haunted? ... I shall join the host 
Of those who, when Proserpina's dark wine 
Touches their lips, forget the haze they knew — 
The years when — tortured, heaven-dreaming men- 
They trusted sleep, the beautiful and true. . . . 
We shall forget our need of sleeping, then ! 
Everything left behind us like a dream 
Shall into an ambiguous darkness fade. 
Safe, safe at last, beyond the fatal stream. 
Upon our brains oblivion shall be laid. . . . 
You will be waiting, on that silent shore; 
And we shall speak. We never spoke before. 



[105] 









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